Search results for ""York Medieval Press""

Drawing upon a surprising wealth of evidence found in surviving manuscripts, this book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care. Friars are often overlooked in the picture of health care in late medieval England. Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, midwives - these are the people we think of immediately as agents of healing; whilst we identify university teachers as authorities on medical writings. Yet from their first appearance in England in the 1220s to the dispersal of the friaries in the 1530s, four orders of friars were active as healers of every type. Their care extended beyond the circle of their own brethren: patients included royalty, nobles and bishops, and they also provided charitable aid and relief to the poor. They wrote about medicine too. Bartholomew the Englishman and Roger Bacon were arguably the most influential authors, alongside the Dominican Henry Daniel. Nor should we forget the anonymous Franciscan compilers of the Tabula medicine, a handbook of cures, which, amongst other items, contains case histories of friars practising medicine. Even after the Reformation, these texts continued to circulate and find new readers amongst practitioners and householders. This book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care, exploring the complex, productive entanglement between care of the soul and healing of the body, in both theoretical and practical terms. Drawing upon the surprising wealth of evidence found in the surviving manuscripts, it brings to light individuals such as William Holme (c. 1400), and his patient the duke of York (d. 1402), who suffered from swollen legs. Holme also wrote about medicinal simples and gave instructions for dealing with eye and voice problems experienced by his brother Franciscans. Friars from the thirteenth century onwards wrote their medicine differently, reflecting their religious vocation as preachers and confessors.

Read more less

Contemporary descriptions of objects no longer extant examined to reconstruct these lost treasures. Surviving accounts of the material culture of medieval Europe - including buildings, boats, reliquaries, wall paintings, textiles, ivory mirror cases, book bindings and much more - present a tantalising glimpse of medieval life, hinting at the material richness of that era. However, students and scholars of the period will be all too familiar with the frustration of trying to piece together a picture of the past from a handful of fragments. The "material turn" has put art, architecture, and other artefacts at the forefront of historical and cultural studies, and the resulting spotlight on the material culture of the past has been illuminating for researchers in many fields. Nevertheless, the loss of so much of the physical remnants of the Middle Ages continues to thwart our understanding of the period, and much of the knowledge we often take for granted is based on a series of arbitrary survivals. The twelve essays in this book draw on a wide array of sources and disciplines to explore how textual records, from the chronicles of John of Worcester and Matthew Paris and inventories of monastic treasuries and noble women to Beowulf and early English riddles, when combined with archaeological and art-historical evidence, can expand our awareness of artistic and cultural environments. Touching on a broad range of issues around how we imaginatively reconstruct the medieval past and a variety of objects, both precious and ephemeral, this volume will be of fundamental interest to medieval scholars, whatever their disciplinary field. Contributors: Katherine Baker, Marian Bleeke, Deirdre Carter, Laura Cleaver, Judith Collard, Joshua Davies, Kathryn Gerry, Karl Kinsella, Katherine A. Rush, Katherine Weikert, Beth Whalley, Victoria Yuskaitis

Read more less

An investigation into the hugely significant works produced by the Worcester foundation at a period of turmoil and change. From the mid-eleventh to the mid-twelfth century Worcester was a monastic community of unparalleled importance. Not only was it home to many of the most famous bishops and monks of the period, including Bishop Wulfstan II: it was also a centre of notable and ambitious scholarly production. Under Wulfstan's guidance, a number of Worcester brethren undertook historical research that resulted in the writing of such renowned texts as Hemming's Cartulary and the Worcester Chronica Chronicarum. Significantly, these historical endeavours spanned the political chasm of the Norman Conquest. The essays collected here aim to shed new light on different aspects of the Worcester "historical workshop", whose literary ouput was, in several respects, pioneering in contemporary European scholarship. Several chapters address the different ways in which the monks organised and updated their archives of documents, both via their sequence of cartularies, with a special focus on the narrative parts of Hemming's Cartulary, and via an interesting (and previously unedited) prose account of the foundation of the see. Others focus on the famous Worcester Chronica Chronicarum, attributed both to Florence and to John, investigating the major model for its composition and structure (the work of Marianus Scotus), the stages in which it was completed, and its connections with Welsh chronicles, as well as the related and fascinating abbreviated version, written mostly in the hand of John himself, and known as the Chronicula. The volume thus elucidates how the Worcester monks navigated the period across the Conquest through the composition of different genres of texts, and how these texts shaped their own institutional memory.

Read more less

Comprehensive catalogue of the hagiographical lessons in Sarum breviaries, with key studies of the most crucial elements. Sarum Use was the most widely used form of the liturgy in late medieval England, but its service books were much less standardized than their modern counterparts. The lack of uniformity is particularly marked in Sarum breviaries' lessons on saints, which can vary enormously from copy to copy. This book is the first comprehensive examination of those lessons and the manuscripts that preserve them. It provides a catalogue of over 80 manuscripts and 12 early printed versions, giving a brief description of each one, sometimes correcting previous views of its date and provenance, and identifying each copy's divergences from the standard Sarum roster of saints. The book also identifies the textual families into which the manuscripts fall and the extent of their divergence from the lessons in both the early printed versions and the inadequate nineteenth-century edition on which modern scholars have previously depended. The author's findings offer an introduction to the unexpectedly rich variety of hagiographical lessons that survive, identify some of the sources behind them, and shed new light on the ways in which the Sarum breviary developed and was disseminated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Read more less

Examination of text concerning the vikings reveals much about their origin myth and legend. Viking settlers and their descendants inhabited both England and Normandy in the tenth century, but narratives discussing their origins diverged significantly. This comparative study explores the depictions of Scandinavia and theevents of the Viking Age in genealogies, origin myths, hagiographies, and charters from the two regions. Analysis of this literary evidence reveals the strategic use of Scandinavian identity by Norman and Anglo-Saxon elites. Countering interpretations which see claims of Viking identity as expressions of contact with Scandinavia, the comparison demonstrates the local, political significance of these claims. In doing so, the book reveals the earliest origins of familiar legends which at once demonize and romanticize the Vikings - and which have their roots in both Anglo-Saxon and Norman traditions.

Read more less

New approaches to the political culture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, considering its complex relation to monarchy and state. The essays collected here celebrate mark the distinguished career of Professor W. Mark Ormrod, reflecting the vibrancy and range of his scholarship on the structures, personalities and culture of ruling late medieval England. Encompassing political, administrative, Church and social history, the volume focusses on three main themes: monarchy, state and political culture. For the first, it explores Edward III's reactions to the deaths of his kinfolk and cases of political defamation across the fourteenth century. The workings of the "state" are examined through studies of tax and ecclesiastical records, the Court of Chivalry, fifteenth-century legislation, and the working practicesof the privy seal clerk, Thomas Hoccleve. Finally, separate discussions of collegiate statutes and the household ordinances of Cecily, duchess of York consider the political culture of regulation and code-making.

Read more less

A radical re-interpretation of the chivalric biography of Boucicaut. The Livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre (1409) is one of the most famous chivalric biographies of the Middle Ages. It presents Jean II Le Meingre, known as Boucicaut (1366-1421), as an ideal knight and role model, and has frequently been seen by modern scholars as a last-ditch effort to defend traditional chivalric values that were supposedly in decline. Here, however, Craig Taylor argues that the biography is a much more complex and interesting text, fusing traditional notions of chivalry with the most fashionable new ideas in circulation at the French court at the start of the fifteenth century. Rather than a nostalgic criticism of contemporary knighthood, it should be seen as a showcase of the latest ideas on chivalry, written to renew the enthusiasm of the great French princes for a man who was in grave danger of falling out of favour: its purpose was to celebrate and to defend a beleaguered Boucicaut against his critics at the royal court, and to explain his actions as governor of Genoa, his failed crusading enterprises in the Eastern Mediterranean and his unsuccessful efforts to broker a solution to the Papal Schism. CRAIG TAYLOR is a Reader in Medieval History at the University of York; he was Director of its Centre for Medieval Studies from 2010 to 2011 and from 2014 to 2017.

Read more less

Fresh examinations of the manuscript which is one of the chief compendiums of literature in the Middle English period. Created in London c. 1340, the Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.2.1) is of crucial importance as the first book designed to convey in the English language an ambitious range ofsecular romance and chronicle. Evidently made in London by professional scribes for a secular patron, this tantalizing volume embodies a massive amount of material evidence as to London commercial book production and the demand for vernacular texts in the early fourteenth century. But its origins are mysterious: who were its makers? its users? how was it made? what end did it serve? The essays in this collection define the parameters of present-day Auchinleck studies. They scrutinize the manuscript's rich and varied contents; reopen theories and controversies regarding the book's making; trace the operations and interworkings of the scribes, compiler, and illuminators; teaseout matters of patron and audience; interpret the contested signs of linguistic and national identity; and assess Auchinleck's implied literary values beside those of Chaucer. Geography, politics, international relations and multilingualism become pressing subjects, too, alongside critical analyses of literary substance. Susanna Fein is Professor of English at Kent State University and editor of The Chaucer Review. Contributors: Venetia Bridges, Patrick Butler, Siobhain Bly Calkin, A. S. G. Edwards, Ralph Hanna, Ann Higgins, Cathy Hume, Marisa Libbon, Derek Pearsall, Helen Phillips, Emily Runde, Timothy A. Shonk, Míceál F. Vaughan.

Read more less

Fresh contributions to the study of medieval manuscripts, texts, and their creators. This exciting collection of essays is centred on late medieval English manuscripts and their texts. It offers new insights into the works of canonical literary writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love, as well as lesser-known texts and manuscripts. It also considers medieval books, their producers, readers, and collectors. It is thus a fitting tribute to one the foremost scholars of the history of the book, Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, whom it honours. Simon Horobin is Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford; Linne Mooney is Professor of Medieval English Palaeography in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. Contributors: Timothy Graham, Richard Firth Green, Carrie Griffin, Gareth Griffith, Phillipa Hardman, John Hirsh, Simon Horobin, Terry Jones, Takako Kato, Linne R. Mooney, Mary Morse, James J. Murphy, Natalia Petrovskaia, Susan Powell, Ad Putter, Michael G. Sargent, Eric Stanley, Mayumi Taguchi, Isamu Takahashi, Satoko Tokunaga, R.F. Yeager

Read more less

Fresh examinations of the activities of Henry V, looking at how his reputation was achieved. Henry V (1413-22) is widely acclaimed as the most successful late medieval English king. In his short reign of nine and a half years, he re-imposed the rule of law, made the crown solvent, decisively crushed heresy, achieved a momentous victory at the battle of Agincourt (1415), and negotiated a remarkably favourable settlement for the English over the French in the Treaty of Troyes (1420). Above all, he restored the reputation of the English monarchy andunited the English people behind the crown following decades of upheaval and political turmoil. But who was the man behind these achievements? What explains his success? How did he acquire such a glorious reputation? The ground-breaking essays contained in this volume provide the first concerted investigation of these questions in over two decades. Contributions range broadly across the period of Henry's life, including his early years as Prince of Wales. They consider how Henry raised the money to fund his military campaigns and how his subjects responded to these financial exactions; how he secured royal authority in the localities and cultivated support within the politicalcommunity; and how he consolidated his rule in France and earned for himself a reputation as the archetypal late medieval warrior king. Overall, the contributions provide new insights and a much better understanding of how Henryachieved this epithet. GWILYM DODD is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Nottingham. Contributors: Christopher Allmand, Mark Arvanigian, Michael Bennett, Anne Curry, Gwilym Dodd, Maureen Jurkowski, Alison K. McHardy, Neil Murphy, W. Mark Ormrod, Jenny Stratford, Craig Taylor.

Read more less

First collective study of the Anglo-Norman prose chronicles, bringing out their essential characteristics, setting them in context, and showing their writers' aims and objectives. The medieval Anglo-Norman prose chronicles are fascinating hybrids of history, legends and romance, building on the rich tradition of historical writing circulating in England at the time of their composition, such as Geoffrey ofMonmouth's Historia and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Their prime subject is the history of England, but they also shed much light on other networks of influence, such as those between families and religious houses. Thisbook studies the essential characteristics of the genre for the first time, situating Anglo-Norman prose chronicles within the multilingual cultures of late medieval England. It considers the chronicles' treatment of the "legendary history of Britain", legends about English heroes, accounts of the Norman Conquest, and histories of noble families. In particular, it explores how Anglo-Norman prose chronicles rewrite the past with rhetorical flourish, in order to advance the contemporary political and personal agendas of their authors and patrons. John Spence gained his PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Read more less

New research into petitions and petitioning in the middle ages, illuminating aspects of contemporary law and justice. The mechanics, politics and culture of petitioning in the middle ages are examined in this innovative collection. In addition to important and wide-ranging examinations of the ancient world and the medieval papacy, it focuses particularly on petitions to the English crown in the later middle ages, drawing on a major collection of documents made newly accessible to research in the National Archives. A series of studies explores the political contexts of petitioning, the broad geographical and social range of petitioners, and the fascinating "worm's-eye" view of medieval life that is uniquely offered by petitions themselves; and particular attention is given to the performative qualities of petitioning and its place in the culture of royal intercession. With their vivid new insights into judicial conventions and the legal creativity spawned by political crisis, these papers provide a closely integrated assessment of current scholarship and new research on these most fascinating and revealing of medieval social texts. CONTRIBUTORS: W. MARK ORMROD, GWILYM DODD, SERENA CONNOLLY, BARBARA BOMBI, PATRICK ZUTSHI, PAUL BRAND, GUILHEM PEPIN, ANTHONY MUSSON, SIMON J. HARRIS, SHELAGH A. SNEDDON, DAVID CROOK

Read more less

Evidence for childhood and youth from the sixth century to the sixteenth, but with particular emphasis on later medieval England. Moving on from the legacy of Ariès, these essays address evidence for childhood and youth from the sixth century to the sixteenth, but with particular emphasis on later medieval England. The contents include the idea of childhoodin the writing of Gregory of Tours, skaldic verse narratives and their implications for the understanding of kingship, Jewish communities of Northern Europe for whom children represented the continuity of a persecuted faith, children in the records of the northern Italian Humiliati, the meaning of romance narratives centred around the departure of the hero or heroine from the natal hearth, the age at which later medieval English youngsters left home, how far they travelled and where they went, literary sources revealing the politicisation of the idea of the child, and the response of young, affluent females to homiletic literature and the iconography of the virgin martyrs in the later middle ages. Contributors: FRANCES E. ANDREWS, HELEN COOPER, P.J.P.GOLDBERG, SIMCHA GOLDIN, EDWARD F. JAMES, JUDITH JESCH, KIM M. PHILLIPS, MIKE TYLER, ROSALYNN VOADEN.

Read more less

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages. Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On crusade, army recruits from different ethnic backgrounds taunted each other's military skills. Men producing ethnography in monasteries and at court drafted derogatory descriptions of peoples dwelling in territories under colonisation, questioning their work ethic, social organisation, religious devotion and humanness. Monks listed and ruminated on the alleged traits of Jews, Saracens, Greeks, Saxons and Britons and their acceptance or rejection of Christianity. In this radical new approach to representations of nationhood in medieval western Europe, the author argues that ethnic stereotypes were constructed and wielded rhetorically to justify property claims, flaunt military strength and assert moral and cultural ascendance over others. The gendered images of ethnicity in circulation reflect a negotiation over self-representations of discipline, rationality and strength, juxtaposed with the alleged chaos and weakness of racialised others. Interpreting nationhood through a religious lens, monks and schoolmen explained it as scientifically informed by environmental medicine, an ancient theory that held that location and climate influenced the physical and mental traits of peoples. Drawing on lists of ethnic character traits, school textbooks, medical treatises, proverbs, poetry and chronicles, this book shows that ethnic stereotypes served as rhetorical tools of power, crafting relationships within communities and towards others.

Read more less

Documents recording the interrogation of sixteen women and the nature of their unusual spiritual practices, now available in a full edition and, for the first time, a full English translation. In September 1332, in the town of Świdnica, an important economic and communication centre of what was then Silesia, a group of sixteen women stood before the Dominican inquisitor, John of Schwenkenfeld, to testify about the local community of beguines, who called themselves the Hooded Sisters or the Daughters of Odelindis. We are fortunate that the original records of this heresy interrogation have survived, preserved as a notarial instrument drawn up shortly afterwards, eventually transferred to the Papal Curia, and now kept in the Vatican Library. The documents provide unique insights into the everyday life and spirituality of this group of lay women, as they attempted to adopt the ideals of vita apostolica. They lived in the strict poverty they thought necessary for spiritual perfection, and took part in austere ascetic practices, including regular flagellation and a strict diet regime, aiming to mortify sinful flesh and help them achieve mystical union with God. Using this evidence, the authors of this book piece together a sense of who these interrogated beguines were and the nature of their spiritual practices. Were they pious illiterates, or self-trained theologians, keenly interested in debates around the doctrine of such intellectuals as Master Eckhart, John Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas? The book also addresses the nature of their interrogation and the conduct of Friar John of Schwenkenfeld. And it contains a full edition and, for the first time, a full English translation of the documents themselves.

Read more less

A survey of the different literary forms adopted by history writers after the Conquest, exploring why and for what effects they were used. Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety (Latin varietas). Furthermore, British historians writing after the Norman Conquest often draw attention to the differing forms of their texts. But why would historians of this period associate literary variety with the work of history-writing? Drawing on theories of literary variety found in classical and medieval rhetoric, this book traces how British writers came to believe that varietas could help them construct comprehensive, continuous accounts of Britain's past. It shows how Latin prose historians, such as William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, filled their texts with a diverse array of literary forms, which they carefully selected and ordered in accordance with their broader historiographical aims. The pronounced literary variety of these influential histories inspired some Middle English verse chroniclers, including Laȝamon and Robert Mannyng, to adopt similar principles in their vernacular poetry. By uncovering the rhetorical and historiographical theories beneath their literary variety, this book provides a new framework for interpreting the stylistic and organizational choices of medieval historians.

Read more less

First major survey of the German inquisitor Petrus Zwicker, one of the most significant figures in the repression of heresy. In the final years of the fourteenth century, waves of persecution shattered German-speaking Waldensian communities, with the scale of inquisitions matching or even greater than the better-known trials in southern France. In the middle of the persecution was the influential and enigmatic figure of the Celestine provincial and inquisitor of heresy, Petrus Zwicker (d.after 1404). His surviving texts and inquisition protocols offer a fresh, intriguing picture of the medieval repression of heresy. Zwicker was an accurate and intelligent interrogator with direct access to the Waldensians' sources and knowledge. But although he is one of the most effective inquisitors of the MiddleAges, he was even more important as the author of anti-heretical texts. His Cum dormirent homines became a standard work on Waldensianism in the fifteenth century (and this study attributes another anti-heretical treatise,the Refutatio errorum, to him). With his unique biblicist and pastoral style, Zwicker struck the right note at a moment when the Church was in crisis. His texts spread rapidly, they were preached to the people and translated into German, and helped to build the fear of heresy, anti-clericalism and disobedience in the years of the Great Western Schism. This book is the first full-length study on Zwicker and his significance to the history of heresy and its repression. It offers a meticulous analysis of the sources left by him and teases out new, ground-breaking discoveries from careful examination of previously poorly known manuscripts. Dr REIMA VALIMAKI isa postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Cultural History, University of Turku

Read more less

An investigation into a variety of texts providing guidance for teachers, parents, and children themselves. The question and procedures of integrating children into wider society during the medieval and early modern period are debated across a wide range of contemporary texts, in both print and manuscript form. This study takes as its focus the ways in which vernacular literature (including English courtesy poems, incunabula and sixteenth-century printed household books, grammar school statutes, and pedagogic books) provided a guide to socialising children. Theauthor examines how the transmission and reception of this literature, showing how patterns of thought changed during the period for parents, teachers, and young people alike; and places children and family reading networks into the context of debates on the history of childhood, and the history of the book. MERRIDEE L, BAILEY Is a social and cultural historian of late medieval and early modern England. She is an Associate Member of the Facultyof History, University of Oxford.

Read more less

Essays on the discipline of medieval history and its practitioners, from the late eighteenth century onwards. A hugely interesting set of essays, reflecting on a variety of ways in which medieval history has developed to the present time. Scholarship of the highest standard, deeply thought-provoking and deeply engaged with the inheritances and future tasks of medieval academic history. The collection will be essential reading for all medievalists. John Arnold, Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge. Medieval history is present in manyforms in our world. Monuments from the Middle Ages or inspired by them are a familiar feature of landscapes across Europe and beyond; the period between the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe and the Reformation and European expansion is an essential part of our imagination, be it conveyed through literature, the arts, science fiction or even video games; it is also commonly invoked in political debates. Specialists in the field have played a majorrole in shaping modern perceptions of the era. But little is known about the factors that have influenced them and their work. The essays in this volume provide original insights into the fabric and dissemination of medieval history as a scholarly discipline from the late eighteenth century onwards. The case-studies range from the creation of specific images of the Middle Ages to the ways in which medievalists have dealt with European identity, contributed to making and deconstructing myths and, more specifically, addressed questions relating to land and frontiers as well as to religion. GRAHAM A. LOUD is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leeds;MARTIAL STAUB is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Sheffield. Contributors: Christine Caldwell Ames, Peter Biller, Michael Borgolte, Patrick Geary, Richard Hitchcock, Bernhard Jussen, Joep Leerssen, G.A. Loud, Christian Lübke, Jinty Nelson, Bastian Schlüter, Martial Staub, Ian Wood.

Read more less

Essays on the medieval chronicle tradition, shedding light on history writing, manuscript studies and the history of the book, and the post-medieval reception of such texts. The histories of chronicles composed in England during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and onwards, with a focus on texts belonging to or engaging with the Prose Brut tradition, are the focus of this volume. The contributors examine the composition, dissemination and reception of historical texts written in Anglo-Norman, Latin and English, including the Prose Brut chronicle (c. 1300 and later), Castleford's Chronicle (c. 1327),and Nicholas Trevet's Les Cronicles (c. 1334), looking at questions of the processes of writing, rewriting, printing and editing history. They cross traditional boundaries of subject and period, taking multi-disciplinary approaches to their studies in order to underscore the (shifting) historical, social and political contexts in which medieval English chronicles were used and read from the fourteenth century through to the present day. As such, the volume honours the pioneering work of the late Professor Lister M. Matheson, whose research in this area demonstrated that a full understanding of medieval historical literature demands attention to both the content of theworks in question and to the material circumstances of producing those works. JACLYN RAJSIC is a Lecturer in Medieval Literature in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London; ERIK KOOPER taughtOld and Middle English at Utrecht University until his retirement in 2007; DOMINIQUE HOCHE Is an Associate Professor at West Liberty University in West Virginia. Contributors: Elizabeth J. Bryan, Caroline D. Eckhardt,A.S.G. Edwards, Dan Embree, Alexander L. Kaufman, Edward Donald Kennedy, Erik Kooper, Julia Marvin, William Marx, Krista A. Murchison, Heather Pagan, Jaclyn Rajsic, Christine M. Rose, Neil Weijer

Read more less

First full-length study of attitudes to abortion in the early medieval west. When a Spanish monk struggled to find the right words to convey his unjust expulsion from a monastery in a desperate petition to a sixth-century king, he likened himself to an aborted fetus. Centuries later, a ninth-century queenfound herself accused of abortion in an altogether more fleshly sense. Abortion haunts the written record across the early middle ages. Yet, the centuries after the fall of Rome remain very much the "dark ages" in the broader history of abortion. This book, the first to treat the subject in this period, tells the story of how individuals and communities, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, construed abortion as a social and moral problem across anumber of post-Roman societies, including Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul, early Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian empire. It argues early medieval authors and readers actively deliberated on abortion and a cluster of related questions, and that church tradition on abortion was an evolving practice. It sheds light on the neglected variety of responses to abortion generated by different social and intellectual practices, including church discipline, dispute settlement and strategies of political legitimation, and brings the history of abortion into conversation with key questions about gender, sexuality, Christianization, penance and law. Ranging across abortion miracles in hagiography, polemical letters in which churchmen likened rivals to fetuses flung from the womb of the church and uncomfortable imaginings of resurrected fetuses in theological speculation, this volume also illuminates the complex cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. Zubin Mistry is Lecturer in Early Medieval European History, University of Edinburgh.

Read more less

A fresh examination of the Cathar heresy, using the records of inquisitorial tribunals to bring out new details of life at the time. Religion amongst ordinary men and women in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages is the subject of this book. Focusing on laypeople attached to the Cathar movement, it investigates the interplay between heresy and orthodoxy, and between spiritual and secular concerns, in people's lives, charting the ways in which these developed through life cycle: childhood, youth, marriage and death. This period was one of great upheaval in the region, brought about bythe Church's response to the perceived threat of heresy, and the book also explores the effects of the Albigensian Crusaders and the inquisitors who followed in their wake. It draws on a large range of evidence, including civic and ecclesiastical legislation, contemporary literature and chronicle, and broader scholarship on the region, but its principal sources are the records of inquisitorial tribunals that operated between 1190 and 1330: transcripts of interview and sentencing which represent the closest thing that exists to an oral history of the period. The author teases out the vibrant detail with which these archives document people's lives, developing and illustrating his argument through the recounting of their stories. Chris Sparks gained his doctorate from the University of York; he now works at Queen Mary University of London.

Read more less

Essays examining the compiler and contents of two of the most important and significant extant late medieval manuscript collections. The Yorkshire landowner Robert Thornton (c.1397- c.1465) copied the contents of two important manuscripts, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91 (the "Lincoln manuscript"), and London, British Library, MS Additional 31042 (the "London manuscript") in the middle decades of the fifteenth century. Viewed in combination, his books comprise a rare repository of varied English and Latin literary, religious and medical texts that survived the dissolution of the monasteries, when so many other medieval books were destroyed. Residing in the texts he copied and used are many indicators of what this gentleman scribe of the North Riding read, how he practised his religion, and what worldly values he held for himself and his family. Because of the extraordinary nature of his collected texts - Middle English romances, alliterative verse (the alliterative Morte Arthure only exists here), lyrics and treatises of religion ormedicine - editors and scholars have long been deeply interested in uncovering Thornton's habits as a private, amateur scribe. The essays collected here provide, for the first time, a sustained, focussed light on Thornton and hisbooks. They examine such matters as what Thornton as a scribe made, how he did it, and why he did it, placing him in a wider context and looking at the contents of the manuscripts. Susanna Fein is Professor of Englishat Kent State University; Michael Johnston is an Assistant Professor of English at Purdue University. Contributors: Julie Nelson Couch, Susanna Fein, Rosalind Field, Joel Fredell, Ralph Hanna, Michael Johnston, George R. Keiser, Julie Orlemanski, Mary Michele Poellinger, Dav Smith, Thorlac Turville-Petre.

Read more less

A fresh reading of the Legend shows it to be one of Chaucer's most carefully crafted and significant works. Professor Collette's approach to this challenging and provocative poem reflects her wide scholarly interests, her expertise in the area of representations of women in late medieval European society, and her conviction that the Legend of Good Women can be better understood when positioned within several of the era's intellectual concerns and historical contexts. The book will enrich the ongoing conversation among Chaucerians as to the significance of the Legend, both as an individual cultural production and an important constituent of Chaucer's poetic.achievement. A praiseworthy and useful monograph. Professor Robert Hanning, Columbia University. The Legend of Good Women has perhaps not always had the appreciation or attention it deserves. Here, it is read as one of Chaucer's major texts, a thematically and artistically sophisticated work whose veneer of transparency and narrow focus masks a vital inquiry into basic questions of value, moderation, and sincerity in late medieval culture. The volume places Chaucer within several literary contexts developed in separate chapters: early humanist bibliophilia, translation and the development of the vernacular; late medieval compendia of exemplary narratives centred in women's choices written by Boccaccio, Machaut, Gower and Christine de Pizan; and the pervasive late fourteenth-century cultural influence of Aristotelian ideas of the mean, moderation, and value, focusing on Oresme's translations of the Ethics into French. It concludes with two chapters on the context of Chaucer's continual reconsideration of issues of exchange, moderation and fidelity apparent in thematic, figurative and semantic connections that link the Legend both to Troilus and Criseyde and to the women of The Canterbury Tales. Carolyn Collette is Emeritus Professor of English Language and Literature at Mount Holyoke College and a Research Associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York.

Read more less

The shocking massacre of the Jews in York, 1190, is here re-examined in its historical context along with the circumstances and processes through which Christian and Jewish neighbours became enemies and victims. The mass suicide and murder of the men, women and children of the Jewish community in York on 16 March 1190 is one of the most scarring events in the history of Anglo-Judaism, and an aspect of England's medieval past which is widely remembered around the world. However, the York massacre was in fact only one of a series of attacks on communities of Jews across England in 1189-90; they were violent expressions of wider new constructs of the nature of Christian and Jewish communities, and the targeted outcries of local townspeople, whose emerging urban politics were enmeshed within the swiftly developing structures of royal government. This new collection considers the massacreas central to the narrative of English and Jewish history around 1200. Its chapters broaden the contexts within which the narrative is usually considered and explore how a narrative of events in 1190 was built up, both at the timeand in following years. They also focus on two main strands: the role of narrative in shaping events and their subsequent perception; and the degree of convivencia between Jews and Christians and consideration of the circumstances and processes through which neighbours became enemies and victims. Sarah Rees Jones is Senior Lecturer in History, Sethina Watson Lecturer, at the University of York. Contributors: Sethina Watson, Sarah Rees Jones, Joe Hillaby, Nicholas Vincent, Alan Cooper, Robert C. Stacey, Paul Hyams, Robin R. Mundill, Thomas Roche, Eva de Visscher, Pinchas Roth, Ethan Zadoff, Anna Sapir Abulafia, Heather Blurton, Matthew Mesley, Carlee A.Bradbury, Hannah Johnson, Jeffrey J. Cohen, Anthony Bale

Read more less

A fresh consideration of the enduring tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, showing its continuing post-medieval influence. The tradition of the seven deadly sins played a considerable role in western culture, even after the supposed turning-point of the Protestant Reformation, as the essays collected here demonstrate. The first part of the book addresses such topics as the problem of acedia in Carolingian monasticism; the development of medieval thought on arrogance; the blending of tradition and innovation in Aquinas's conceptualization of the sins; the treatment of sin in the pastoral contexts of the early Middle English Vices and Virtues and a fifteenth-century sermon from England; the political uses of the deadly sins in the court sermons of Jean Gerson; and the continuing usefulnessof the tradition in early modern England. In the second part, the role of the tradition in literature and the arts is considered. Essays look at representations of the sins in French music of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries; in Dante's Purgatorio; in a work by Michel Beheim in pre-Reformation Germany; and in a 1533 play by the German Lutheran writer Hans Sachs. New interpretations are offered of Gower's "Tale of Constance" and Bosch's Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins. As a whole, the book significantly enhances our understanding of the multiple uses and meanings of the sins tradition, not only in medieval culture but also in the transition from the medievalto the early modern period. RICHARD G. NEWHAUSER is Professor of English and Medieval Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe; SUSAN J. RIDYARD is Professor of History and Director of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium,The University of the South, Sewanee. Contributors: Richard G. Newhauser, James B. Williams, Kiril Petkov, Cate Gunn, Eileen C. Sweeney, Holly Johnson, Nancy McLoughlin, Anne Walters Robertson, Peter S. Hawkins, CarolJamison, Henry Luttikhuizen, William C. McDonald, Kathleen Crowther.

Read more less

A survey of the history, holdings, decoration, and conservation of one of England's finest medieval libraries, with full catalogue. The Willoughby family, from Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, built up an extensive medieval library, including the notable Wollaton Antiphonal; theirs is the largest surviving library gathered by a gentry family of the period, the product of a single acquisitive burst, beginning around 1460 and mainly completed at about the time of the Dissolution in 1540. The manuscripts remain unique because of the very substantial core which survives more or less in situ, together with a huge collection of family archives, at the University of Nottingham, just a few miles from their original home. This book focuses upon the ten manuscripts now in the Wollaton Library Collection as well asthe famous Antiphonal. Essays explore the history of the library and the Willoughby family, the books of Sir Thomas Chaworth, the art and function of the Antiphonal, the works of pastoral instruction, the decoration of the Frenchmanuscripts (including the earliest fully illustrated manuscript of romances), the Confessio Amantis, and the conservation of the collection. The essays are followed by a full catalogue of the Wollaton Library Collection aswell as of manuscripts and early printed books now dispersed as far afield as Tokyo and New York. Contributors: Alixe Bovey, Gavin Cole, Ralph Hanna, Dorothy Johnston, Rob Lutton, Derek Pearsall, Alison Stones, Thorlac Turville-Petre.

Read more less

Groundbreaking surveys of the complex interrelationship between the languages of English and French in medieval Britain. With co-editors: CAROLYN COLLETTE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, LINNE MOONEY, AD PUTTER, and DAVID TROTTER England was more widely and enduringly francophone in the middle ages than many standard accounts of its history, culture and language allow. The development of French in England, whether known as "Anglo-Norman" or "Anglo-French", is deeply interwoven both with medieval English and with the spectrum of Frenches, insular and continental, used withinand outside the realm. As the language of nearly a thousand literary texts, of much administration, and of many professions and occupations, the French of England needs more attention than it has so far received. The essaysin this volume form a new cultural history focussed round, but not confined to, the presence and interactions of French speakers, writers, readers, texts and documents in England from the eleventh to the later fifteenth century.Taking the French of England into account does not simply add new material to our existing narratives of medieval English culture, but changes them, restoring a multi-vocal, multi-cultural medieval England in all its complexity, and opening up fresh agendas for study and exploration. Contributors: HENRY BAINTON, MICHAEL BENNETT, JULIA BOFFEY, RICHARD BRITNELL, CAROLYN COLLETTE, GODFRIED CROENEN, HELEN DEEMING, STEPHANIE DOWNES, MARTHA DRIVER, MONICA H. GREEN, RICHARD INGHAM, REBECCA JUNE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, PIERRE KUNSTMANN, FRANCOISE H. M. LE SAUX, SERGE LUSIGNAN, TIM WILLIAM MACHAN, JULIA MARVIN, BRIAN MERRILEES, RUTH NISSE, MARILYN OLIVA, W. MARK ORMROD, HEATHER PAGAN, LAURIE POSTLEWATE, JEAN-PASCAL POUZET, AD PUTTER, GEOFF RECTOR, DELBERT RUSSELL, THEA SUMMERFIELD, ANDREW TAYLOR, DAVID TROTTER, ELIZABETH M. TYLER, NICHOLAS WATSON, JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, ROBERT F. YEAGER

Read more less

A wide variety of texts (from chronicles to Chaucer) studied for evidence of medieval attitudes towards the processes of change as they affected individuals at all points of their lives. Rites of passage is a term and concept more used than considered. Here, for the first time, its implications are applied and tested in the field of medieval studies: medievalists from a range of disciplines consider the varioustheoretical models - folklorist, anthropological, psychoanalytical - that can be used to analyse cultures of transition in the history and literature of fourteenth-century Europe. Ranging over a wide variety of texts, from chronicles to romances, from priests' manuals to courtesy books, from state records to the writings of Chaucer, Gower and Froissart, the contributors identify and analyse medieval attitudes to the process of change in lifecycle, status,gender and power. A substantive introduction by Miri Rubin draws together the ideas and materials discussed in the book to illustrate the relevance and importance of anthropology to the study of medieval culture. Contributors: JOEL BURDEN, PATRICIA CULLUM, ISABEL DAVIS, JANE GILBERT, SARAH KAY, MARK ORMROD, HELEN PHILLIPS, MIRI RUBIN, SHARON WELLS. NICOLA F. McDONALD is Lecturer in Medieval Literature, the late W.M ORMROD was Professor of Medieval History, University of York.

Read more less

Historiographical survey of inquisition texts, from lists of questions to inquisitor's manual, studies their role in the suppression of heresy. Did you see a heretic? When? Where? Who else was there?'. The inquisitor is questioning, and a suspect is replying; a notary is translating from the vernacular into Latin, and writing it down, abbreviating and omitting at will; later there is the reading out of a sentence in public and then, in a few cases, burning. At every stage there is a text: a list of questions, for example, or an inquisitor's how-to-do it manual. The substance and intention of these texts forms the subject of this book. The introduction brings them all together in an historiographical survey of the role of texts in the suppression of heresy, and the volume is crowned by the Quodlibet lecture, in which the doyen of all heresy historians, ALEXANDER PATSCHOVSKY, magisterially surveys the political nature of heresy accusations. Contributors: MARK PEGG, PETER BILLER, CATERINA BRUSCHI, JAMES GIVEN, JOHN ARNOLD, JESSALYN BIRD, ANNE HUDSON, ALEXANDER PATSCHOVSKY.

Read more less

Fresh perspectives on many facets - political, social, legal, military, and diplomatic - of the reign of one of the most important late medieval kings. With a sharp focus on high politics, this is a cohesive and exemplary collection of rewarding scholarship. HISTORY The studies in this book add colour and depth to the reign of one of the most important and fascinating of late medieval kings. New research addresses received ideas about Edward III's kingship, including the way he came to power and how he kept it; his use of nobility and sergeants-at-arms [his political and military elite]; hispreoccupation with justice; military campaigns in the Hundred Years War; and the propaganda and packaging of his rule, both in terms of his English throne and his claims to France. The collection is drawn together in a critical introduction written by Chris Given-Wilson and Michael Prestwich. Contributors: CAROLINE SHENTON, JAMES BOTHWELL, DAVID GREEN, ANTHONY MUSSON, RICHARD PARTINGTON, ANDREW AYTON, W.M. ORMROD, CRAIG TAYLOR, A.K. McHARDY, CLIFFORD J. ROGERS, MICHAEL BENNETT.

Read more less

Penance and confession were an integral part of medieval religious life; essays explore literary evidence. Penance, confession and their texts (penitential and confessors' manuals) are important topics for an understanding of the middle ages, in relation to a wide range of issues, from medieval social thought to Chaucer's background. These essays treat a variety of different aspects of the topic: subjects include the frequency and character of early medieval penance; the summae and manuals for confessors, and the ways in which these texts (written by males for males) constructed women as sexual in nature; William of Auvergne's remarkable writing on penance; and the relevance of confessors' manuals for demographic history. JOHN BALDWIN's major study `From the Ordeal to Confession', delivered as a Quodlibet lecture, traces the appearance in French romances of the themes of a penitent's contrition, the priest's job in listening, and the application of the spiritual conseil and penitence. PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ROB MEENS, ALEXANDER MURRAY, JACQUELINE MURRAY, LESLEY SMITH, MICHAEL HAREN, JOHN BALDWIN

Read more less

Attitudes towards `labour', in the wake of the Black Death, shown to range from early protest literature to repressive authoritarianism. At the very moment that the image of the honest labourer seemed to reach its apogee in the Luttrell Psalter or, a few decades later, in Piers Plowman, the dominant culture of the landed interests was increasingly suspiciousof what it described as the idleness, greed and arrogance of the lower orders. Labour was one of the central issues during the fourteenth century: the natural disasters and profound social changes of the period created not merelya "problem" of labour, but also new ways of discussing and (supposedly) solving that problem. These studies engage with the contrasting and often competing discourses which emerged, ranging from the critical social awareness of some of the early fourteenth-century protest literature to the repressive authoritarianism of the new national employment laws that were enforced in the wake of the Black Death, and were expressed in counter-cultures of resistanceand dissent. JAMES BOTHWELL and P.J.P. GOLDBERG lecture in history, and W.M. ORMROD is Professor of History, at the University of York. Contributors: CORDELIA BEATTIE, CHRISTOPHER DYER, RICHARD K. EMMERSON,P.J.P. GOLDBERG, KATE GILES, CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON, STEPHEN KNIGHT, DEREK PEARSALL, SARAH REES JONES.

Read more less

New interdisciplinary essays on the treatment of the body in medieval theology. The attitudes towards the human body held by different branches of medieval theology are currently a major focus of scholarly attention. This first volume from York Medieval Press includes studies of the metaphor of man as head and woman as body, Abelard, women and Catharism, the female body as an impediment to ordination, women mystics, and the University of York's 1995 Quodlibet Lecture given by Eamon Duffy on the early iconography and "lives" of St Francis of Assisi. PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale Univesrity. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ALCUIN BLAMIRES, DAVID LUSCOMBE, W.G. EAST, A.J. MINNIS, DYAN ELLIOTT, ROSALYNN VOADEN, EAMON DUFFY

Read more less

Examines manuscripts of Langland, Chaucer, Gower, Nicholas Love and Arthurian tales, alongside other devotional works and archival evidence.

Read more less

A consideration of the allegory of Christ the Divine Physician in medical and religious writings.

Read more less

Traces the journey from ill health to miraculous cure through the lens of hagiographical texts from twelfth-century England. The cults of the saints were central to the medieval Church. These holy men and women acted as patrons and protectors to the religious communities who housed their relics and to the devotees who requested their assistance in petitioning God for a miracle. Among the collections of posthumous miracle stories, miracula, accounts of holy healing feature prominently and depict cure-seekers successfully securing their desired remedy for a range of ailments and afflictions. What can these miracle accounts tell us of the cure-seekers' experiences of their journey from ill health to recovery, and how was healthcare presented in these sources? This book aims to answer these questions via an in-depth study of the miraculous cure-seeking process, considering Latin miracle accounts produced in twelfth-century England, a time both when saints' cults flourished and there was an increasing transmission and dissemination of classical and Arabic medical works. Focused on seven shorter miracula (including Eadmer of Canterbury's Miracula S. Dunstani and Thomas of Monmouth's Vita et Passione S. Wilelmi Martyris Norwicensis) with a predominantly localised appeal, and thus on a select group of cure-seekers - including Abbot Osbert of Notley who suffered from an eye complaint, Leofmær the bedridden knight, and Gaufrid who experienced a bad tooth extraction - the volume brings together studies of healthcare and pilgrimage, looking at the alternative to secular medical intervention and the practicalities and processes of securing saintly assistance.

Read more less

A study of the involvement of the Cistercian Order in the events surrounding the outbreak of heresy - particularly that of the Cathars and the resulting Albigensian Crusade - in southern France. Led by the example of Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian monks turned their attention to the world outside the monastery walls in response to the threat posed by heretical Christians, in particular the Cathars. The white monks, withother intellectuals, turned to pen, pulpit and popular preaching to counteract heresy, some accepting posts as bishops and papal legates, helping and even directing the Albigensian crusade, and contributing to the formulation ofprocedures for inquisition. Kienzle examines this important but little-studied aspect of Cistercian history to discover how and why the Order undertook endeavours that drew the monks outside their monastic vocation. The analysis of texts about the preaching campaigns and their contexts illuminate the ways in which medieval monastic authors perceived heresy, preached, and wrote against it. Professor BEVERLY MAYNE KIENZLE teaches at Harvard Divinity School.

Read more less

A fresh close reading of the texts of one of the four surviving major manuscripts of Old English poetry, reappraising Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11 to discover some of the preoccupations of its compliers. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11 is one of the four major manuscripts of Old English poetry to survive and the only one of these to have had a planned sequence of illuminations. Junius 11 is made up of different poems - Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan - compiled to resemble a long narrative that represents salvation history from its violent origins to its Last Days. While the poems draw inspiration from biblical, apocryphal and commentary traditions, they combine in the manuscript to create powerful effects that can also be understood through an appreciation of the distinctive craft and complexity of early medieval vernacular verse. But can the language of the poetry within the manuscript tell us anything about the aims of the Junius 11 project, or the preoccupations of its compilers? This book approaches Junius 11 as an ambitious poetic endeavour that was designed to offer counsel through the medium of Old English verbal art. Tracing thematic language across and between the poems, and offering close readings of them in their manuscript context, MS Junius 11 and its Poetry argues that it is early medieval political ideas represented by the Old English words ræd (good counsel) and unræd (ill counsel) that emerge as the key components underlying the central conflicts of the history of humankind the makers of this manuscript sought to create. The poems themselves, by giving us many examples of rulers and leaders falling to ruin, have the potential to offer their own ræd to those who may have found themselves in relatable positions. But Junius 11 demands work for such gifts. Its poems generate impressions cumulatively and collectively, offering instruction to those who might build connections across pages, demanding audiences become attentive and active readers so that they might find solace and advice in a world that moves towards destruction.

Read more less

Essays considering how information could be used and abused in the service of heresy and inquisition. The collection, curation, and manipulation of knowledge were fundamental to the operation of inquisition. Its coercive power rested on its ability to control information and to produce authoritative discourses from it - a fact not lost on contemporaries, or on later commentators. Understanding that relationship between inquisition and knowledge has been one of the principal drivers of its long historiography. Inquisitors and their historians have always been preoccupied with the process by which information was gathered and recirculated as knowledge. The tenor of that question has changed over time, but we are still asking how knowledge was made and handed down - to them and to us - and how their sense of what was interesting or useful affected their selection. This volume approaches the theme by looking at heresy and inquisition in the Middle Ages, and also at how they were seen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The contributors consider a wide range of medieval texts, including papal bulls, sermons, polemical treatises and records of interrogations, both increasing our knowledge of medieval heresy and inquisition, and at the same time delineating the twisting of knowledge. This polarity continues in the early modern period, when scholars appeared to advance learning by hunting for medieval manuscripts and publishing them, or ensuring their preservation through copying them; but at the same time, as some of the chapters here show, these were proof texts in the service of Catholic or Protestant polemic. As a whole, the collection provides a clear view of - and invites readers' reflection on - the shading of truth and untruth in medieval and early modern "knowledge" of heresy and inquisition. Contributors: Jessalynn Lea Bird, Harald Bollbuck, Irene Bueno, Jörg Feuchter, Richard Kieckhefer, Pawel Kras, Adam Poznanski, Luc Racaut, Alessandro Sala, Shelagh Sneddon, Michaela Valente, Reima Välimäki

Read more less

Traces the journey from ill health to miraculous cure through the lens of hagiographical texts from twelfth-century England. The cults of the saints were central to the medieval Church. These holy men and women acted as patrons and protectors to the religious communities who housed their relics and to the devotees who requested their assistance in petitioning God for a miracle. Among the collections of posthumous miracle stories, miracula, accounts of holy healing feature prominently and depict cure-seekers successfully securing their desired remedy for a range of ailments and afflictions. What can these miracle accounts tell us of the cure-seekers' experiences of their journey from ill health to recovery, and how was healthcare presented in these sources? This book aims to answer these questions via an in-depth study of the miraculous cure-seeking process, considering Latin miracle accounts produced in twelfth-century England, a time both when saints' cults flourished and there was an increasing transmission and dissemination of classical and Arabic medical works. Focused on seven shorter miracula (including Eadmer of Canterbury's Miracula S. Dunstani and Thomas of Monmouth's Vita et Passione S. Wilelmi Martyris Norwicensis) with a predominantly localised appeal, and thus on a select group of cure-seekers - including Abbot Osbert of Notley who suffered from an eye complaint, Leofmær the bedridden knight, and Gaufrid who experienced a bad tooth extraction - the volume brings together studies of healthcare and pilgrimage, looking at the alternative to secular medical intervention and the practicalities and processes of securing saintly assistance.

Read more less

First English translation of seminal essays on heresy and other aspects of medieval religious history. In the field of medieval religious history, few scholars have matched the originality of the German academic Herbert Grundmann (1902-1970). Trained at the University of Leipzig and president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica from 1959 until his death, Grundmann published a series of brilliant books and articles that fundamentally reshaped how historians of culture and religion conceptualized the medieval past. Yet although later generations of scholarshave since approached their research from vantage points shaped by his arguments, few of his writings have been previously accessible to an Anglophone audience. This volume presents translations of six of Grundmann's most significant essays on the intertwined themes of medieval heresy, literacy, and inquisition. Together, they offer new access to Grundmann's scholarship, one which will catalyze new perspectives on the medieval religious past and enable a fresh consideration of his intellectual legacy in the twenty-first century. JENNIFER KOLPACOFF DEANE is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Read more less

A range of approaches (literary, historical, art-historical, codicological) to this mysterious but hugely significant manuscript. Extravagantly heterogeneous in its contents, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 is an utterly singular production. On its last folio, the scribe signs off with a self-portrait - a cartoonishly-drawn male head wearing a close-fitted hood - and an inscription: "scripsi librum in anno et iii mensibus" (I wrote the book in a year and three months). His fifteen months' labour resulted in one of the most important miscellanies to survive from medieval England: a trilingual marvel of a compilation, with quirky combinations of content that range from religion, to science, to literature of a decidedly secular cast. It holds medical recipes, charms, prayers, prognostications, magic tricks, pious doctrine, a liturgical calendar, religious songs, lively debates, poetry on love and death, proverbs, fables, fabliaux, scurrilous games, and gender-based diatribes. That Digby is from the thirteenth century adds to its appeal, for English literary remnants from before 1300 are all too rare. Scholars on both sides of the vernacular divide, French and English, are deeply intrigued by it. Many of its texts are found nowhere else: for example, the French Arthurian Lay of the Horn, the English fabliau Dame Sirith and the beast fable Fox and Wolf, and the French Strife between Two Ladies (a candid debate on feminine politics). The interpretationsoffered in this volume of its contents, presentation, and ownership, show that there is much to discover in Digby's lively record of the social and spiritual pastimes of a book-owning gentry family. SUSANNA FEIN is Professor of English at Kent State University. CONTRIBUTORS: Maureen Boulton, Neil Cartlidge, Marilyn Corrie, Susanna Fein, Marjorie Harrington, John Hines, Jennifer Jahner, Melissa Julian-Jones, Jenni Nuttall, David Raybin, Delbert Russell, J.D. Sargan, Sheri Smith

Read more less

In-depth study of an important writer and close associate of Becket. Herbert of Bosham (c.1120-c.1194) was one of the most brilliant, original and versatile thinkers of the twelfth century. Herbert was Thomas Becket's closest confidant, a theologian, biblical commentator, historian, letter-writer and Hebrew scholar; he wrote a Life of St Thomas unlike any other contemporary biography, produced one of the most visually-arresting illuminated Bible books of his age, and composed a commentary on the Psalms inspired by Jewish scholarship. His uncompromising character, and the originality and complexity of his thought, meant that Herbert's works were largely ignored during his lifetime and forgotten for centuries, but more recently they have begun to receive the attention and approval that their author insisted they deserved. The chapters in this book, the first to be devoted to Herbert's life and works, examine his eventful and troubled life, his remarkable corpus of works,and how they came to be neglected and rediscovered. They provide an introduction to his life, writings and legacy, direction to existing scholarship on the subject, and new insights on, interpretations of and discoveries about anidiosyncratic representative of the "twelfth-century renaissance". MICHAEL STAUNTON is Associate Professor of History at University College Dublin. Contributors: Julie Barrau, Laura Cleaver, Matthew Doyle, Anne J. Duggan, Christopher de Hamel, Sabina Flanagan, Michael Staunton, Nicholas Vincent.

Read more less

Offers a revisionist angle to the question of sacral kingship, showing the continued importance of liturgical ceremonial in the twelfth century and onward. Shortlisted for the 2020 Whitfield Prize The long twelfth century heralded a fundamental transformation of monarchical power, which became increasingly law-based and institutionalised. Traditionally this modernisation of kingship, in conjunction with the ecclesiastical reform movement, has been seen as sounding the death knell for sacral kingship. Increasingly concerned with bureaucracy and the law, monarchs supposedly paid only lip service to the idea that they ruled in the image of God and the Old Testament rulers of Israel. The liturgical ceremony through which this typology was communicated, inauguration, had become a relic from a bygone age; it remained significant, but for its legally constitutive nature rather than for its liturgical content. Through a groundbreaking comparative approach and an in-depth engagement with the historiographical traditions of the three realms, this book challenges the paradigm of the desacralisation of kingship and demonstrates the continued relevance of liturgical ceremonial, particularly at the moment of a king's accession to power. In integrating the study of male and female rites and by bringing together multiple source types, including liturgical texts, historical narratives, charter evidence and material culture, the author demonstrates that the resonances of liturgical ceremonial, and the biblical models for kingship and queenship it encompassed, continued to shape concepts of rulership in the high Middle Ages. JOHANNA DALE is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at University College London.

Read more less

First full-length study of the role and duties of the medieval cantor. Cantors made unparalleled contributions to the way time was understood and history was remembered in the medieval Latin West. The men and women who held this office in cathedrals and monasteries were responsible for calculating the date of Easter and the feasts dependent on it, for formulating liturgical celebrations season by season, managing the library and preparing manuscripts and other sources necessary to sustain the liturgical framework of time, andpromoting the cults of saints. Crucially, their duties also often included committing the past to writing, from simple annals and chronicles to more fulsome histories, necrologies, and cartularies, thereby ensuring that towns, churches, families, and individuals could be commemorated for generations to come. This volume seeks to address the fundamental question of how the range of cantors' activities can help us to understand the many different waysin which the past was written and, in the liturgy, celebrated across the Middle Ages. Its essays are studies of constructions, both of the building blocks of time and of the people who made and performed them, in acts of ritual remembrance and in written records; cantors, as this book makes clear, shaped the communal experience of the past in the Middle Ages. Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Martin's University; Margot Fassler is Kenough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame and Robert Tangeman Professor Emerita of Music History at Yale University; A.B. Kraebel is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity University. Contributors: Cara Aspesi, Anna de Bakker, Alison I. Beach, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler, David Ganz, James Grier, Paul Antony Hayward, Peter Jeffery, Claire Taylor Jones, A.B.Kraebel, Lori Kruckenberg, Rosamond McKitterick, Henry Parkes, Susan Rankin, C.C. Rozier, Sigbjorn Olsen Sonnesyn, Teresa Webber, Lauren Whitnah

Read more less

[An] admirable collection. . For anyone interested in what Wogan-Browne calls "the historiography of female community", nuns' libraries and literacy, and Barking abbey itself, this first-class collection of essays is essential reading. CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW Essays on the texts produced at Barking Abbey - one of the most important centres for writings in the Middle Ages.

Read more less

Essays offering a gendered approach to the study of the move from manuscript to early printed book show how much women were involved in the process. The transition from medieval manuscript to early printed book is currently a major topic of academic interest, but has received very little attention in terms of women's involvement, a gap which the essays in this volume address.They add female names to the list of authors who participated in the creation of English literature, and examine women's responses to authoritative and traditional texts in revealing detail. Taking its cue from the advances made by recent work on manuscript culture and book history, this volume also includes studies of material evidence, looking at women's participation in the making of books, and the traces they left when they encountered actual volumes.Finally, studies of women's roles in relation to apparently ephemeral texts, such as letters, pamphlets and almanacs, challenge traditional divisions between public and private spheres as well as between manuscript and print. Dr Anne Lawrence-Mathers is Lecturer in History, University of Reading; Phillipa Hardman is Senior Lecturer in English, University of Reading. Contributors: Gemma Allen, Anna Bayman, James Daybell, Alice Eardley, Christopher Hardman, Phillipa Hardman, Elizabeth Heale, Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Adam Smyth, Alison Wiggins, Graham Williams

Read more less